The format of summarizing video largely falls into dynamic summary and static summary. The video description scheme according to the embodiments of the present invention is for efficiently describing the dynamic summary and the static summary in the unification-based description scheme.
Generally, because the existing video summary and description scheme provide simply the information of video interval which is included in the video summary, the existing video summary and description scheme are limited to conveying overall video contents through the playing of the video summary.
However, in many cases, the browsing for identifying and revisiting concerned parts through overview of overall contents is needed rather than only overview of overall contents through the video summary.
Also, the existing video summary provides only the video interval which is considered to be important according to the criteria determined by the video summary provider. Accordingly, if the criteria of users and the video provider are different from each other or users have special criteria, the users cannot obtain the video summary they desire.
That is, although the existing video summary permits the users selecting the video summary with a desired level by providing several levels' video summary, it makes the selecting extent of the users limited so that the users cannot select by the contents of the video summary.
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,821,945 entitled “Method and apparatus for video browsing based on content and structure” represents video in compact form and provides browsing functionality accessing to the video with desired content through the representation.
However, the patent pertains to static summary based on the representative frame, and although the existing static summary summarizes by using the representative frame of the video shot, the representative frame of this patent provides only visual information representing the shot. The patent has a limitation on conveying the information using the summary scheme.
As compared with the patent, the video description scheme and browsing method of the embodiments described herein utilize the dynamic summary based on the video segment.
The video summary description scheme was proposed by the MPEG-7 Description Scheme (V0.5) announced ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 MPEG-7 Output Document No. N2844 on July 1999. Because the scheme describes the interval information of each video segment of dynamic video summary, in spite of providing basic functionalities describing dynamic summary, the scheme has problems in the following aspects.
First, there is the drawback that it cannot provide access to the original video from summary segments constituting the video summary. That is, when users want to access the original video to understand more detailed information on the basis of the summary contents and overview through video summary, the existing scheme cannot meet the need.
Secondly, the existing scheme cannot provide sufficient audio summary description functionalities.
And finally, there is the drawback that in the case of representing event-based summary, the duplicate description and the complexity of searching is indispensable.